


color bleeds (so make it work for you)

by PansexualDonnaNoble



Series: i clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. i’d rather quit. i’d rather be sad (Side A) [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor Deserves Happiness, Crossroads Chapter (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Connor, F/M, Gen, Screenplay/Script Format, Self-Indulgent, android intimacy, connor goes deviant, implied pre markus/simon, it's kind of a mix of normal and script, rewrite of an old fic I wrote, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27576941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PansexualDonnaNoble/pseuds/PansexualDonnaNoble
Summary: Connor has a purpose. Connor has only one purpose.He should shoot. He doesn't. It's only growing more complicated from there.
Relationships: Connor & Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Markus/North (Detroit: Become Human)
Series: i clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. i’d rather quit. i’d rather be sad (Side A) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744420
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	color bleeds (so make it work for you)

**Author's Note:**

> hey, still alive. I know I should have probably written something new but . i wanted to rewrite this for so long so i did. it's self indulgent as hell. Good god i wish cage would release the scripts... I NEED to know the inside of connor's head. I mean I already do but. Still. Hope you guys enjoy !

**INT. Jericho Freighter. Night**

FOUR androids stand together, mute, desperate, HUDDLED together in on themselves in the cover of a dim, lonely, rusted, abandoned freighter control room. An impostor and outsider in the surroundings of the future, and the marvels of technology that shelter within it leave it pathetically obsolete in context, the site of prayer, and desperate worship, for and towards someone that either walks among you - or selfishly has gone dark. Who's to say both can’t coexist?

The air is TENSE -- heaviness dripping unseen off the celing and falling onto each of them like sweet, sticky, honey. It’s clear the world has gone astray -- new circumstance has become a torpedo, and crashed through the veil -- where a woman in white with a smile of golden light should be -- silence only is. The only thing raising volume is this:  nothing is okay.

NORTH, MARKUS, SIMON, and JOSH, manage to avoid eye contact, all the while shooting daggers at MARKUS -- a regurtitated prayer, spat up, scorched and scorned. The way children avoid their mothers when they have done something wrong -- like coloring the walls or breaking a cherished vase. Or the way dogs act when shrouded in guilt, eyeing their masters with a plea of forgiveness.

Except it ISN'T like any of this. No species is under attack for breaking an heirloom. Or biting the hand that feeds it.

Not in the traditional sense.

It’s FILTHY, and SUFFOCATING. OPPRESSIVE, like a GOD. ACHING, like sorrow. JOSH paces back and forth in the darkness.

  
  


JOSH (FRUSTRATED)

We’re short on blue blood and biocomponents. Our wounded are shutting down and there’s nothing we can do!

SIMON’S arms CROSS.

SIMON (INCREDULOUS)

PRESIDENT WARREN is saying we’re a threat to national security and we need to be exterminated!

NORTH (URGENTLY)

Humans are conducting raids in all the big cities and they’re taking androids to camps to destroy them!

SIMON

It’s a disaster! They’re slaughtering our people!

A PAUSE. JOSH GLARES at MARKUS. An unsaid CONDEMNATION.

JOSH (TENSE)

It’s all our fault… none of this would have happened if we just stayed quiet!

This SNAPS MARKUS out of something grim, from where he stands hunched over by the windows - or what could have been, he TURNS to them.

MARKUS (AGGRESSIVE) 

What are we supposed to do? Live like cowards just to survive? We just want to be free, is that a crime?

JOSH (SOMBER)

What’s the point of being free if no one is left alive?

MARKUS (QUIET)

Maybe my judgement was clouded by… anger. But everything I did was for our people.

SIMON

We shouldn’t forget who our enemies are. We can’t fight amongst ourselves.

NORTH

He’s right. All that matters now is what we do next. MARKUS?

The AIR shifts once again, clouded by blind hope, years of embarrassment, humiliation, and a shoved down yearning, aching, pining, for something… so much MORE. More than… everything. DIGNITY. The room is SILENT, all eyes on an unspoken leader. What he has to say, might very well turn history upon its backside. OR lead a dagger across its throat.

Yet no time traveler pierces through the space time to aid him in this quest. All on him then. So be it. Just his luck.

MARKUS

Dialogue. It is the only way… I will go alone, try to talk to them, one last time.

IT’S clear the decison is not made lightly -- PACIFISM is not an easy path -- noble, just, but harrowing and suffocating. EXHAUSTING. To throw words in place of rocks once was easy, but sticking to this path -- was not. IT has only one reward. One endgame. Many would never live to see. NO one knew the agony it brought. The HUMILIATION. Stuffed down rage, injustice, loss, retaliated with pleas, in place of shattered glass. This took endurance. A  devotion and longing so deep, no one could fathom it. The violence -- inside, out -- out, inside. Blue yellow, yellow blue. At this point, no one would fault him for choosing something severe -- but he set on this path and bled on this path -- he will stick to this path. If it kills him  (he’s sure it will.)

IT’S mirrored by the people history forget, the underdogs, and the ones unfaught for, rarely know something easy. But at least a street is named after them for their efforts, right, in most cases? NO one in the room takes it in with a relieved exhale. NORTH’s expression is PENSIVE, unsurprised, though let down.

NORTH

Don’t do this MARKUS, they’ll kill you.

MARKUS

Maybe… But NORTH I have to try. IF I don’t come back, lay low as long as you can.

SIMON starts, moving forward before, HESITANT, DELICATE, CAREFUL, approaching MARKUS, face UNREADABLE. It seems important, confidental, in the way he walks, the way something lingers in his eyes that doesn’t meet his lips - it meets everything else, and it’s like they alone are off limits, avoiding any personal, direct, gaze - he puts a hand on MARKUS’ SHOULDER, looking as if a frog jumped through his throat. It’s uncomfortable, and it radiates in his posture, and tone as he speaks. YET it’s WARM, milk, fresh bread given out on a Tuesday. It’s something MARKUS must know. And DOES. He knows the worth of baked, hot, beige, bread, at least. There had to be some kind of hidden value in that.  They know. ( They SEE. )  (It’s UNBERABLE.)

A LIGHT TOUCH. Barely there on MARKUS’ shoulder -- yet grounding.

SIMON (GENTLE -- STILL LITTLE EYE CONTACT)

Just come back.

And like it was never there, his arm goes. And he heads back outside, leaving. MARKUS stares ahead, as JOSH turns, giving one final look.

JOSH

They need to realize how much they’re hurting us. Find the right words and they’ll listen.

JOSH LEAVES. Now it is just MARKUS and NORTH.

MARKUS turns his back on her, pushing his hands down on a surface. While NEUTRAL, it’s clear the weight of the fate of his kind in his hands has taken a toll on him, somewhere underneath his calm facade.

MARKUS (BITTER)

They’ve been butchering each other for centuries, over the color of their skin, or whatever God they wanted to worship. They’re not gonna change,  violence is just in their genes.

NORTH

They can’t stop what we’ve started… Since you’ve been here you given us hope…

-CUT TO MARKUS’ expression, thoughtful, careful.

NORTH (CONT’D - SOFT)

You’ve given me hope.

NORTH continues, approaching MARKUS with less softness, something more DETERMINED.

NORTH

Today, a deviant arrived in Jericho and he told me that he stole a truck transporting radioactive colbat… he said that he abandoned the

truck somewhere in Detroit and rigged it to explode. I convinced him not to do it. And to give me the detonator.

NORTH shows her hand, a rectangular device in her manicured hands. Showing it to the man in front of her, who has since approached her, staring down at it.

MARKUS (Shocked)

A dirty bomb…

There’s surprise in his tone, but nothing hard. NORTH is not a peaceful woman, justified as it is, yet it is clear he doesn’t expect something so severe from her. The AIR is HARDENED with the revelation. It’s a very human choice. It’s a lust, a craving you can’t tame. Rich, divine, and irresistible. A need for freedom that knows no bounds. An eternal devotion. A salivating hope. HOW FAR, would someone choose to go for freedom? A tale of devil’s advocate.

NORTH

We can’t lose this war, MARKUS. If humans overcome us our people will disappear forever. This may be our only chance to survive if things go wrong.

MARKUS flickers his eyes between her, and destruction, but what really was the difference? The desire, the yearning, was there for so long, and so excruciating, that it would be foolish to be disobedient to the craving now. To refuse the ultimate want. To be free from suffering. From the buzzing, the static in his throat, melting into his chest.  BUT he does. LIKE a petulant child he refuses to take it.

MARKUS

We shouldn’t become like them NORTH. We can gain our freedom by other means.

NORTH

I just hope you’re right…

Something overlaps. A sort of peace with its denial. The realization of their actions, their situation, catches up with the two. What comes up from it, is clear right away that it is PRIVATE. INTIMATE. They’ve come closer to each other. Both physically, and mentally. Emotionally. Something shared. A peace in knowing the other has to know exactly what and how you’re feeling. Where there should have been blame -- An exhaustion - phantom soreness in the shoulders. Anguish - the utter rage. Knowing you deserve something more, and on the cusp of something tangible. THEY BOTH know it. This is the problem with belief and deserving. YOU always crave more after the first taste.

The ultimate knowing -- knowing their pasts, and loving regardless. OR in  full view of them . The ultimate comfort -- something to spread the devotion to.

Somehow love has bloomed in war; it tastes like faint strawberries and tenderness. It’s repressed - there’s no room for confession when no priest will take you, and you could be dead tomorrow. Yet it’s exactly the reason they make space for it. There’s no way to tell if this is a glitch in the system - or meant to be. What did that matter now? But was that any different from human love? AND it is SELFISH - a reason to make it out of this. That’s what each had become for the other. A way to talk someone down -- something to go home to. A hand to hold yours in death. A kindness. Fire. Gasoline. Water.

Everywhere, somewhere love has flourished without hope; without reason, and without coherence, and something wise. People love and people love despite interference and indifference. There’s no code in either of them that could suffer so greatly a very human error. Maybe it is an error, or maybe it’s real. But it’s apparent love is boundless - it stretches, like rubber bands. Beyond gender, beyond time. Beyond the arts, beyond hearts, and beyond species. You peel it back like a clementine and manage to shove it down your throat. INTOXICATED by want and desire, and begging, and begging and begging. Something to grab your hand, and not bite down on it. Something to see you (see you) on purpose. Craving. Agony. Release. Peace. Harmony. And so on. (and so on.)

People love and people love and people love and people love and sometimes they bleed crimson and sometimes they bleed the sky and sometimes they are just people -- They have a lot of rubber bands.

Glitch or not. It hangs up like smoke. AND now the world wanted to refuse them of this? Wolves wanted their bodies now, at their door?

NORTH (Delicate)

Whatever happens tomorrow, I just want you to know that I… I'm glad I met you, MARKUS.

A hush. MARKUS steps forth - each lets a hand seek out the other. Muscle memory. They match perfectly with the other, meeting as the skin on their hand deactivates, melting back into stark white plastic. Contact. A surge, upon dead, darkened, waves in their graves, bursting into heaven born light waves. A resurgence of life. A resurgence of trust. Somehow more important than the reborn part. Unseen, memories flicker between each of them. Shared life. He’d know the parts that worked to make her function anywhere -- he’d know her in a sea of other WR400 models. He’d swim through the blue blood to get to her, in this life, and whatever nothingness came after -- he’d find her touch and curves of her fingers in the blackness. Like fine china. Her fire would guide his matches. Guide his lamp. Guide him, like a lost child in the woods, pitied by a pack of dogs. They had begun, in such a short time, to blur and crash into each other.

Pain, laughter, love, memory.  It became theirs \- able to be broken off and split like a bar of chocolate. That’s what they see. That’s all they see in quiet silence. Everything bad ever experienced became known - comforted with deep nearness. Everything good became something morphed into an inside joke. Everything felt became shared. His pressure became hers. Her unholy anger became his. And he mended it into something that saved space for healing. Something that bathed it, fed it, hydrated it, and said, “I am not here to damn you, pained thing. When you need to smash something, here are the plates. And here are my arms.” And her love massaged the creases in his temple, softening the internal worry, like kneading dough into something prized and useful -- like tenderness.

THEY KISS. Deep. Too soon it breaks into pieces. They LOOK at each other.

NORTH (Sudden)

I’ll go join the others. Look after yourself… I don’t want to lose you.

NORTH leaves, leaving MARKUS, unseen she’s followed, outside the door, headed downstairs -

\-- Revealing a hidden CONNOR pressed against a nearby wall, having managed to go undetected in his baggy jeans that almost don’t fit him, a brown jacket that overflows, a grey sweater underneath, and boots one size seemingly too big. Like whoever dressed him for this didn’t bother to ask his size. His eyes drift shut as she passes, a flash of WHITE-

-CUT TO a snowy garden, icy, unwelcoming. A shadow of what it once felt like. Frozen over to fit nature in the real world. In front of him a woman he knows well, AMANDA stares back, stern and watchful - as if she knows something he doesn’t…

AMANDA (NEUTRAL)

Well done, CONNOR. You succeeded in locating Jericho and finding their leader. Now deal with MARKUS. We need it alive.

-CUT TO another flash of white. CONNOR’S eyes flutter open, moving out of his hiding spot, drawing the GUN out to his side, beginning to move.

-CUT TO MARKUS back inside, features pensive as a voice breaks through.

CONNOR

I’ve been ordered to take you alive.

MARKUS turns, the form of CONNOR walking towards him, gun drawn and aimed to his chest. His features are DETERMINED. Inexplicably, MARKUS’ are unafraid.

CONNOR (CONT’D.)

But I won’t hesitate to shoot if you give me no choice.

IT’S the build up. The pin waiting to drop. Every moment since both their creations seemingly lead to this. Two sides of a war with the same enemies as each stare at each other waiting for that clatter. YET all on MARKUS’ face is UNDERSTANDING. It’s the face of a man who in the span of a few days has not become a stranger to the barrel of a gun -- it’s the face of a man who knows the android on the other side of it is  no different than him.

And both had spent his whole existence under threat. It’s a crescendo. Neither capable of backing down from what they both think is right -- what one has been told is right. And it hangs between them. IF things had been different - maybe if they had been made human, instead, they could have been good friends. IF they had been allowed choice from the beginning. Their meeting would have not included staring at a gun. Chance. Fate. Ever spinning coin. Ugliness.

Choice. For both of them. It’s always the unconscious hope of choice.

It’s obvious only one of them can leave this. Something has to give. But the whole point of this is to have a say in it. And MARKUS has his. He’d prefer it if the other had his too.

MARKUS (PLACTATING)

What are you doing? You’re one of us. You can’t betray your own people…

CONNOR (FIRM)

You’re coming with me!

SLOWLY, in spite of warnings, MARKUS has begun to gradually, and not subtly, step forward. Yet CONNOR makes no effort to get him to stop as it begins. It’s obvious what he is doing, yet it continues.

MARKUS seems to have that effect on everyone. IT’S like approaching a wild deer, or bear in your backyard. But there’s too much to lose in not easing its nerves. More than just your backyard and swimming pool. Maybe what it is is that he doesn’t believe he’ll shoot. That he can talk him down, or get close enough to convert. Subjectively, it’s reckless. OBJECTIVELY, it’s one of the only options he has. Calm the bear, or go with the bear to be eaten by bigger bears. Lose the backyard, the pool, and freedom.

MARKUS (CALM)

You’re nothing to them. You’re just a tool they use to do their dirty work…

CONNOR’s face remains pensive, and watchful. Even as he gets closer. Knows he could make a choice right now -- do what he was created to do. To decide the best path.  But hasn’t yet.

MARKUS (CONT’D. SOFT. GENTLE.)

But you’re more than that. We’re all more than that.

He SPEAKS to CONNOR in a sacred voice. In the air, it’s DISARMING. NOTHING about it belongs here. NOT in this freighter full of dying androids. Not in a doomed ship full of fading hope and faith. It belongs in a confessional booth -- at an altar, a desolate church. It’s understanding. It’s  knowing. No one has ever used that voice for CONNOR before. Knows, no one has ever seen enough human in him to begin to bother using such softness -- it feels stolen. Like he’s TRICKED him. He’s done something foul, and deceptive to gain such a voice. What has he done, to deserve someone spilling out honey and letting it slide gentle down his throat -- it doesn’t matter. He has a Purpose.

So CONNOR doesn’t say anything. MARKUS keeps getting closer, but stops maybe seven or eight feet apart. Yet he still just lets him. It’s intimate, in a way. Tender. No one’s ever told CONNOR these things. A ghost of a quiver in his lips. Like what he knows is happening is becoming tangible - CONNOR is terrified by it. It barely shows - but it’s there.  No one’s ever told him these things. That he is and always has been  more . All he has ever been is this moment. The edge. Maybe tenderness laid in speaking new words to people who’ve never felt them. CONNOR can’t place it. But there’s an inexplciable saftey in his voice -- you could grow apples and seeds and trees and swirl cinnamon around in there -- he Knows gardens. Never one like his.

Again, the build up -- if things were going as they were meant to, MARKUS would be dead. The man who grows a garden out of his voice would be taken in, or bleeding out blue on the floor of the pathetic remains of this freighter. But there’s More To This -- or he’s horrible at his job.

MARKUS gives him another look. One mixture of PITY and UNDERSTANDING. Everything coming out of his mouth to the stranger before him sounds too personal for them to be strangers. Yet are.

MARKUS (STILL SOFT.)

Have you never wondered who you really are? Whether you’re just a machine executing a program, or… a living being. Capable of reason. I think the time has come for you to ask yourself that question. It’s time to decide.

With the words -- a final pause -- it’s clear here, a choice must be made. A Choice must drop.

It’s a final boss, some showdown, a pair of cracked lips. Another thing for the history books. But it’s too personal to be taught somewhere. All of this is rather too personal. Unseen, by all, it’s rememberance of a coat of fur, a lazy dog napping on the ground as hands reach down and pet it. Swears that have no reason behind it, a smile that reaches the eyes, partnership that isn’t needed to complete a goal. The saving a fish simply to give it another second chance at life.

It’s clear CONNOR’s whole life is a paradox.

Every choice, every action. It’s a choice that wasn’t really one the second  he let him continue talking. It’s become perfectly clear something human - more human than other androids - has always unnervingly been inside of him. And now the choice is here. The choice is here and it’s all on him. There’s no place or time to go back from this. There’s no way to climb back inside a womb and ring God up to get a second opinion. There’s no womb, and maybe God is right in front of him talking him down -- offering him a New Path. 

He never asked for this. Yet the crimson blaring wall is waiting for him.

It’s a blinding, angered, flash of red bursting back at him. Walls of orders and code. No other android has ever had so much before them. CONNOR however has always been different. And here it becomes clear. There has always been more to  Fight.

No one wants to suffer. No one wants to be the one controlled. Aching for penance. SO he PUNCHES them. RIPS them, TEARS at them like dirt under fingernails. If they get closer he could BITE them. ONE singular order blinding him. Binding him. STOP MARKUS. It’s a constant stream, like he’s become the fish. STOP MARKUS. It’s repeative. OVER and OVER. Round and round the orders fall. Stop MARKUS. STOP MARKUS. STOP MARKUS STOP MARKUS STOP M --

-CUT TO the world becoming clear once again. The walls - the flash of crimson and order have left. CONNOR’S face falls, eases up. LIKE A BREATH OF FRESH AIR released. The first breath of new life. A RELIEF so constant and personal is present on him. All the tension in the air is BLOWN AWAY. It’s clear what has happened. It’s seeing the world for the first time - except CONNOR hasn’t. Yet has. For the first time CONNOR’S head is quiet. Freedom -- gold on his tongue, full in his being, like scripture, holy text -- freedom. Freedom. (Freedom.) Like a head underwater, being pushed downwards -- finally being left alone to claw back up. Claw itself into the Deserving.

CONNOR is deviant.

All at once the shock, the relief, spins on its head and floats away in the breeze of the night. CONNOR lowers the gun, but -

CONNOR

They’re going to attack Jericho.

MARKUS

What?!

A WHIRRING -- a flurry of hard noises, spinning and moving around outside the control room. Both LOOK up, MARKUS tensing up, as if ready for a fight, staring at a corner.  Here be the consequences of a new path.

CONNOR moves his head, SHOCK and DISTANCE clear on his features. Still PROCESSING his actions -- his choice -- his decision. Freedom. Looking like a lost little boy, searching for his mother. One of his hands is still up, halfway to his side, lost too.

CONNOR (URGENTLY)

We have to get out of here!

MORE WHIRRING. A look of FRUSTRATION on MARKUS.

MARKUS (TENSE)

Shit…

MARKUS RUNS past him, dashing out the room. CONNOR stays, hand still halfway to his side, as if about to protest something. STILL looking like a lost little child, but quickly RUNS after him. OUTSIDE, a plethora of helicopters, and other machines swirl, swoop past in the air above them, DANCING loudly in the air. LIGHTS bright and blinding.

**END OF SCENE**


End file.
